Friends both to lust and learning, they frequentSilence, and love the horror darkness breeds.Erebus would have chosen them for steedsTo hearses, could their pride to it have bent.

Dreaming, the noble postures they assumeOf sphinxes stretching out into the gloomThat seems to swoon into an endless trance.

Their fertile flanks are full of sparks that tingle,And particles of gold, like grains of shingle,Vaguely be-star their pupils as they glance.

— Roy Campbell, Poems of Baudelaire (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952)

♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Cats

No one but indefatigable lovers and oldChilly philosophers can understand the trueCharm of these animals serene and potent, whoLikewise are sedentary and suffer from the cold.

They are the friends of learning and of sexual bliss;Silence they love, and darkness, where temptation breeds.Erebus would have made them his funereal steeds,Save that their proud free nature would not stoop to this.

Like those great sphinxes lounging through eternityIn noble attitudes upon the desert sand,They gaze incuriously at nothing, calm and wise.